Goodman Games

When running The Portal Under the Stars this question became a matter of life or death:

When 0-level PCs start dropping like flies, someone with an Occupation of Healer, Herbalist, etc is going to ask: "What do I need to roll to heal some hit points on my fellow 0-levels?"

Thoughts?

"Your skills rely upon enhancing natural healing processes and have no noticeable effect on the short term - you are, however, skilled at making sure wounds are properly dressed to reduce risk of infection or further complications."

Not that I have seen many 0-level characters take a hit and keep on kicking... 1d4+Stamina doesn't have great chances of being more than a single attack worth of HP.

Yeah - most of the 0-levels I have had seem to die in one hit. Occasionally one will survive a hit that was minimum damage, they tend to not last much longer though.

A player in my game has TWO 0-level characters who've survived TWO hits each... pretty lucky.

Wow! Two hits is impressive! Especially to have had two characters from the same player survive that. I have had one character survive one-hit. Many more die from the very first blow!

Yeah, combination of good stamina bonus and a good roll for hps, plus low damage rolls... very good luck.

So in other words, having an occupation of Healer or Herbalist does nothing to help with healing in game terms?

Perhaps you could allow the healer to double the natural healing rate of a PC he is tending to, e.g. 2 hit points per night instead of a single one.

Otherwise, I don't think I'd allow any kind of on-the-spot healing.

I have allowed healers to stabilize a 0-level that is at _exactly_ 0 hit points. But, it has to happen in the same round that the character gets the damage -- and the DC his hefty. Stabilized just means that the character can roll to "recover the body." This puts the 0-level out of the adventure, if successful, -- essentially walking wounded until the group can get back to civilization.

I throw my guys a bone. What can I say?

No. No other words - just the ones I used, if you please.

Long term recovery, such as spending days resting to trigger the normal HP recovery, can be enhanced by a healer or herbalist with the right supplies. Probably as far up as 150% healing rate (3 hp per 2 days rest).

I also use infection when it seems particularly high-risk (character's trudging through swamp-land and never stopping to treat their wounds), and allow healer or herbalist characters ability to treat and prevent that.

A healer, not an herbalist, would also be useful in mitigating the effects of certain critical hit results such as broken limbs - anything a splint or good bandage would reduce the detriment of.

Far from useless, just as I originally said.

When I was running Attack of the Frawgs, I allowed some minor healing.

SPOILERS: There are traps that are similar to bear traps, and I allowed some minor healing (1 hp) from those traps if the character survived stepping into one. It seemed appropriate because of the damage source. I would not have allowed the same from a spear thrust! Actually, when I said No to other types of healing, the difference seemed to make sense to my players, too, because they didn't push it.